Saturday, March 14, 2015

Time to Get Out of Bed: Homily on the Healing of the Paralyzed Man for the Second Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

St. Mark 2:1-12

We all know what
it’s like to want to stay in bed in the morning. We’re sleepy, comfortable, and warm; we would
like to turn off the alarm clock and go back to sleep. Now it’s fine to do that every once in a
while when we really don’t need to get up and get going. But if we get in the habit of sleeping in,
we’ll probably lose our jobs, neglect our families, do poorly in school, and be
less than the people God wants us to be.

And if we’re tempted to stay in bed
sometimes, imagine how the paralyzed man in our gospel reading felt. He had probably stayed in bed his whole life;
he could move only if people carried him.
But Jesus Christ not only forgave his sins that day, He gave him the
ability to stand up and walk. In fact,
He commanded Him to “arise, take up your bed, and go to your home.” He was to get on with living the new life
that Christ had given him.

We don’t know how this man felt; he
was probably profoundly grateful to the Lord for changing His life. But think for a minute about how hard it may
have been for him to obey Christ’s command.
He knew how to live as a paralyzed person, how to be dependent upon
others. That’s probably the only life he
had known and all of a sudden that changed.
I imagine that that could be pretty unsettling and scary.

Sometimes even people who know that
they have ruined their lives are often terrified by the possibility of living
differently. They may not like how
they’ve lived so far, but at least they know how to live that way, they know
what to expect. They’ve become comfortable with their lifestyles at some level,
no matter how miserable they are. The
same may have been true of this paralyzed man. So it was probably with fear and
trembling that He got up, picked up his bed, and walked home.

In this season of Great Lent, we are
all called to see ourselves in this paralyzed man. For we have become too comfortable with our
own sins, our own habits of thought, word, and deed, even though they have
weakened and distorted us. Despite our
best intentions, we live like slaves to our self-centered desires: pride, envy, anger, lust, self-righteousness,
fear, laziness, and gluttony so easily paralyze us. Sin has put down roots in our bad habits of
how we think, act, speak, and relate to others and to God. We often can’t even
imagine what it’s like to live free from the domination of our own passions and
sins. And we certainly can’t heal
ourselves of these spiritual sicknesses by will power. At a deep level in our souls, we find it
almost impossible at times to practice self-control.

The good news is
that we can all still do what so many truly repentant sinners did when they
encountered Jesus Christ: In humility, they opened their lives to His
mercy. They touched the hem of His
garment and fell down before Him; they cried, “Lord, I believe, help my
unbelief” from the depths of their hearts; they left their nets, gave their
goods to the poor, and literally gave up their lives to be His disciples and
apostles. Like us, they were weakened
by their sins and afraid of what the new life in Christ would entail. But they still obeyed—with fear and
trembling-- our Lord’s command to: “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your
house.” Despite their fears and
weaknesses, they moved forward, they stepped out, they pressed on in the
journey to the Kingdom.

In Lent, we
pray, fast, give to the needy, and mend our broken relationships with one
another; as we prepare to celebrate the joy of Christ’s resurrection, we should
turn away from any sin, bad habit, or unhealthy relationship that isn’t
pleasing to God. If we take Lent
seriously, we will often feel like someone recovering from paralysis or in
physical therapy. We will struggle,
become uncomfortable, and wrestle with fears, frustrations, and doubts. Often we will be tempted to stay in bed, to
give up and take it easy. How tragic it
would have been for the man in our gospel lesson to have done that, to have
disobeyed the Lord’s command to embrace His healing and move forward into a new
life. And how tragic it will be for us
if we choose the false comfort of our sins and passions over the glorious freedom
of the children of God.

But how truly wonderful it will be for us to
use Lent as a time to wake-up, to recognize that it is through the challenges
of repentance that we open our lives to the healing and peace of the Lord. Let us use these few weeks to turn from the
weakness and slavery of sin to enter more fully into the strength and blessedness
of life eternal that shines so brightly at Pascha. For the Lord’s command also applies to
us: “Arise, take up your bed, and go to
your house.” In other words, accept and live the new life that
Christ has given you. This was good,
though difficult, news for the paralyzed man to receive; now it’s our turn to follow
his example, to trust that the Lord really can heal us, and to obey His command
to get on with our lives to the glory of God.

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Fr. Philip has addressed audiences at St. Herman Orthodox Theological Seminary in Kodiak, AK, and St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, NY. He has also earned lots of frequent flyer miles as an invited participant in international Orthodox consultations on social ethics in Greece, Romania, and Syria.

He often introduces visiting groups of students from local universities to the Orthodox faith. He has also spoken about Eastern Christianity at Methodist, Episcopal, and Church of Christ congregations in Abilene. You may listen to his podcasts on www.ancientfaithradio.org. He has also been interviewed on “Come Receive the Light,” an internationally syndicated radio program of the Orthodox Christian Network (www.myocn.net). Anyone wanting to invite him to speak may send an email to: plemasters@mcm.edu.